Tom Butcher

Last year, in all of the election fervor, you might have noticed a new acronym being thrown around the Internet if you were as connected to news sources and blogs as I was. The letters “MSM,” which stand for “Mainstream Media,” would appear like a golden siren, alerting me to the political orientation (not to […]

For many gay people in America who fell asleep on November 4 thinking that their nation had finally taken a great leap forward, it must have seemed that their country had simultaneously taken several steps backward when they awoke to news of Proposition 8. Other provisions passed around the country, such as those in Florida and Arizona, were proactive—that is, they anticipated and moved to eliminate a theoretical future right of homosexual marriage.

Some 30 or so years after the movement really hit its stride, contemporary intellectualism still struggles with extricating itself from the shadow of postmodern-ism. Now, postmodernism is an extremely large and ill-defined movement, and the term means different things and refers to different time periods depending on whether you’re talking about literature, philosophy, art, architecture, […]

I’m not going to lie: To a long-time McCain supporter, it must seem almost ridiculous that he would have to directly declare his separation from the man whom Garrison Keillor, saint that he is, will only refer to as the Current Occupant.

It has been acknowledged in intellectual circles for some time now that race is a social construction. That is to say, certainly there are certain physical characteristics we associate with certain races, but the manner in which we determine which of these groupings constitutes a specific race is entirely artificial.

You might have heard of the Amethyst Initiative—it’s been making the rounds of all of the big corporate news outlet lately. I first read about it last Wednesday in an Internet article from the Baltimore Inquirer, but scarcely 24 hours had passed before ABC, NBC and CNN were all echoing the story, as well as any other network which three otherwise unassuming letters could get their hands upon. The issue: alcohol.